Jay Y. Lee is set to spend the next five years in prison after receiving one of the harshest sentences handed to a South Korean chaebol executive.

A court convicted him of bribing his way to greater control of the Samsung empire his family founded and while it was part of a bigger corruption scandal that brought down South Korea’s president, the trial could have significant impact on the way Samsung is run.

The trial showed the "close ties" between Korea's leading business groups and the political elite. Prosecutors had sought 12 years in prison for the 49-year-old billionaire, whose lawyer said he would appeal. Any sentence of more than three years can’t be suspended which is the normal way the elite obtain their get out of jail free card.

However the judgment reflects a greater willingness by South Korea to actually do something about the arrogant elite who run their big companies. In the past, a long list of business leaders, including Lee’s father, were convicted for corrupt behavior but were let off. The younger Lee is unlikely to enjoy such leniency.

Presiding judge Kim Jin-dong told the Seoul Central District Court that it was shocking that the disease of political-business collusion between Korea’s most powerful person, the president, and a conglomerate is not a thing of the past but still continuing.

“It will be hard to recover from this loss of faith. The fact that the defendants were executives who represented Samsung Group makes the influence on the society and economy hugely adverse.”

Lee was convicted of all five charges he faced, including allegations of embezzlement.

While the ruling casts doubt over Lee’s return to the conglomerate his grandfather founded almost 80 years ago, the business is doing well, with Samsung Electronics posting record earnings and its shares rising 30 percent this year, outperforming the benchmark Kospi.

The guilty verdict immediately removes the public face of Samsung, which could make it harder for the company to do business in some cases, according to Paul Swiercz, professor of management at George Washington University.

“It will be more difficult for Samsung to negotiate the transnational deals with its present and future global partners”, Swiercz said.

Along with Lee’s sentencing, several former executives were convicted Friday. Former Samsung Corporate Strategy Office chief Choi Gee-sung and former President Chang Choong-ki were each sentenced to four years in prison, while two other executives got suspended prison terms.

The younger Lee’s absence could lead to further empowerment of managers such as Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun, who oversees semiconductors; President J. K. Shin, who is in charge of mobile products; and President Yoon Boo-keun, who runs the consumer appliances business.

Through hundreds of hours of testimony from dozens of witnesses, prosecutors sought to draw a link between backing from a state-run pension for a contentious 2015 merger of Samsung affiliates and money paid to a confidante of then President Park Geun-hye, including an $800,000 horse for the friend’s daughter.

The head of South Korea's Samsung Group Jay Y. Lee, may be languishing in a jail cell but he is allowed plenty of visitors which probably means he is still running the company.

Lee is kept well away from other inmates at the Seoul Detention Centre but under South Korean regulations he can meet his attorneys whenever he likes.

He can have a 30-minute visit per day from someone else, including executives from one of Samsung’s affiliates, or at least 12 hours of such meetings a month. He is also allowed special meetings in a visiting room that doesn't have partitions, allowing detainees to review documents and receive phone calls.

Samsung has fudged questions about Lee’s involvement in the running of the company and said that Lee's priority is preparing the legal defense so the truth can be revealed in future court proceedings.

But Samsung hasn't named a replacement for Lee, who did not manage day-to-day affairs but was instead acting as the key decision maker on major initiatives such as new investments, acquisitions, personnel decisions and restructuring.

At the moment sources within Samsung suggest that there is no Plan B to replace Lee and he is widely expected to walk free after the first trial.

Samsung Group has disbanded its corporate strategy office, the conglomerate's nerve center controlled by Lee and his lieutenant Choi Gee-sung, who is also a defendant in the case.

Lee does not have access to a computer in his 6.56 square meter cell, he can view documents during those meetings with his lawyers and Samsung executives. Lee is not allowed to take documents back to his cell. He can also make phone calls with permission of the warden, but calls can be recorded or listened to by the authorities.

Samsung’s Supreme Dalek Jay Lee was arrested on Friday over his alleged role in a corruption scandal.

The special prosecutor's office claim Lee of bribed a chum of President Park Geun-hye to gain government favours related to leadership succession at the conglomerate.

He will face charges of bribery, embezzlement, hiding assets overseas and perjury.

The 48-year-old Lee was taken into custody at the Seoul Detention Centre this morning after waiting there overnight for the decision. He was being held in a single cell with a telly and desk, a jail official said. The official did not mention if it was a Samsung telly.

All this is the latest round of an influence-peddling scandal that led parliament to impeach Park in December. If that decision is upheld by the Constitutional Court would make her the country's first democratically elected leader forced from office.

Samsung and Lee have denied doing anything wrong. No decision had been made on whether Lee's arrest would be contested or whether anyone is asking for bail yet.

The judge rejected the prosecution's request to also arrest Samsung Electronics president Park Sang-jin.

Lee's detention is not expected to hamper day-to-day operations at Samsung firms, which are run by professional managers. But it could cause a mess for the wider operations of the Samsung empire.

The group had been planning to reorganize the group under a holding company structure and abandon its future strategy office which was portrayed in a poor light during the scandal.

Reuters even went as far to say that Samsung could not get past last year's disastrous roll-out of its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, which were prone to fires. Apparently, Lee’s arrest will make it difficult for the Galaxy S8, to be a success and will mean the iPhone 8 will beat it. No, we can’t see it either.

A Massachusetts man was sentenced to 21 months in prison for taking part in a cybercrime scheme that hacked accounts at banks, brokerage firms and government agencies in an attempt to steal more than $15 million.

Robert Dubuc, 41, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to commit access device fraud and identity theft in federal court in New Jersey in April.

A co-defendant, Oleg Pidtergerya, pleaded guilty to the same charges and is scheduled for sentencing in December.

Prosecutors said the two men were members of an international cybercrime ring led by Oleksiy Sharapka and Leonid Yanovitsky of Kiev, Ukraine, who have also been indicted but have not been caught.

The group hacked into accounts in 2012 and 2013 at global banks and other institutions, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, the US Department of Defence, PayPal and others, and diverted funds into accounts and debit cards they controlled, prosecutors said.

The group used “cash out” crews to withdraw cash from ATMS and making fraudulent purchases, according to prosecutors. Dubuc ran the Massachusetts crew, while Pidtergerya led a crew in New York.

In series of strange news that seem to become perfectly in tune with the apparent plummeting of the global IQ pool, Ohio man Mark Byron escaped prison after partially ignoring court orders. Byron had made comments about his former wife, for which he was punished by Hamilton County Domestic Relations Court.

At the time he wrote: "If you are an evil, vindictive woman who wants to ruin your husband's life and take your son's father away from him completely — all you need to do is say you're scared of your husband or domestic partner and they'll take him away." His punishment consisted of posting daily apologies on Facebook for a month.

He stopped posting the apologies after 26 days, claiming that the punishment violated his freedom of speech. Judge Jon Sieve ruled on Monday that he posted it long enough, which means Byron won’t have to do time. Still, Byron claims he was prepared to go to jail to defend his free speech rights.

According to the initial ruling, several of Byron's comments were intended to generate a negative and venomous response towards his wife from his Facebook friends. The wife’s attorney said she’s disappointed Byron didn’t go to prison.

A California phisher was jailed for 12 years by a Californian court for his role in an international scam that cheated more than 38,000 people.

Tien Truong Nguyen, 34, worked with Romanian scammers to help drive people to the sites through email phishing.The court was told that Nguyen sold the data containing the identities stolen from the fake sites to Ryan Price and Stefani Ruland. These two men then setup lines of credit at GE Capital kiosks at Walmart in Northern California.

Victims ended up paying between $1,000 and $2,000. These lines of credit were used to purchase goods at the store and resell the purchases. Nguyen, Price and Ruland got $200,000 in goods from Walmart.

Nguyen was arrested by police in 2007. In his house they found web templates to build fake versions of sites like eBay, Paypal and banks such as Washington’s Heritage Bank.

He had bank and credit card numbers from 38,500 victims, a Remington 870 Magnum Express shotgun with a supply of ammo. Normally it is the right of everyone American citizens to carry a gun, but Nguyen wasn’t allowed to have a firearm due to previous convictions from three felonies that included writing fraudulent checks.

He was charged with conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, possession of a firearm and access-device fraud. During sentencing, lawyers for Nguyen attempted to argue that he had cleaned up his life and stopped using meth which would have helped.

A juror who contacted a defendant through the social networking website Facebook and caused a multi-million dollar case to collapse, has been jailed for eight months. Joanne Fraill, 40, has the honour of being the first British person to be convicted of contempt of court involving the internet

Solicitor General Edward Garnier said her case should serve as a warning to other jurors. He told Reuters that it was important that the integrity of our justice system and the integrity of our jury system is maintained and preserved.

Fraill admitted at London's High Court to using Facebook to swap messages with Jamie Sewart, 34, a female defendant who had been acquitted in an ongoing drug trial in the northern English city of Manchester last year. Fraill carried out an internet search into Sewart's boyfriend, Gary Knox, a co-defendant, while the jury was still thinking about the case.

When her actions were revealed, the £6 million pounds trail was scrapped and the judge was forced to discharge the jury. Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge, the head of the judiciary, said in a written ruling Fraill was "a woman of good character" and had not tried pervert the course of justice. But her actions were such flagrant breaches of orders made by the trial judge and jail for a juror committing similar contempt was "virtually inevitable".

Ironically Sewart was given a two-month sentence suspended for two years after being found guilty of contempt by replying to Fraill.

The Thai authorities have arrested a bloke who is an American citizen and claimed he has made disparaging remarks about their king. Americans have been complaining about people who have royalty ever since they got rid of their in a French backed coup and replaced him with a corporate oligarchy and Paris Hilton.

The Thais are upset that the American posted a link on his blog four years ago to a banned book about the Southeast Asian nation’s ailing king, so they clearly have long memories. The 54-year-old man has denied the charges, which also include inciting public unrest and violating Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act.

The Thai-born man Joe Gordon, lived in the US state of Colorado for around 30 years before returning recently to Thailand for medical treatment, the website said. He is being held in a Bangkok prison after a Thai court denied his request for bail.

An Italian bloke who was so addicted to playing online computer games has been jailed after beating up his life for telling him to stop.

According to Italian press reports, the bloke who has been identified as “Nino C,” hails from Canegrate and spent 20 hours a day playing an online roleplaying game. It got so bad that he started to lose jobs and then, when his wife tried to keep him away from the PC, he started beating her up.

The man was stopped by agents of the Commissioner of Legnano following the complaint lodged by his wife, who finally decided to put an end to the abuse that lasted over a year. Although the fact that he also appeared to be having an online affair with another player did not help.

The family took off only holiday to Sicily for him to detoxify, but that just made him worse. He suffered from illnesses including seizures, until he was forced into a psychiatric hospital in Legnano. However soon after he was released he beat up his wife so badly she ended up in hospital and the cops were called.

The harrowing case is being touted in the Italian press as an example of the dangers of online gaming.

In a landmark UK case, a teenager has been jailed for 16 weeks after he refused to give coppers the password to his computer. Oliver Drage, 19, of Liverpool, was arrested in May 2009 after coppers wanted to know about a sexual exploitation ring they were investigating.

But coppers were baffled by a 50-character encryption password Drage had on his PC. He was formally asked to disclose his password but failed to do so, which is an offence under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. Coppers are still trying to crack the code on the computer to examine its contents and if there is anything nasty on his PC he will get another day in court.

Det Sgt Neil Fowler pointed out that Drage was previously of good character so the immediate custodial sentence handed down by the judge in this case shows just how seriously the courts take this kind of offence.